Univision's Jorge Ramos, a man who regularly pushes for legalizing illegal aliens in the United States, recently interviewed presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and asked what he thought about fellow candidate Mitt Romney's support for the "attrition through enforcement" approach to illegal immigration – the policy already embraced by a number of states.
As caught on video, Newt broke into laughter, and asked Ramos a question: "How close are you to breaking up, laughing out loud at this fantasy?" Newt then delved into class warfare, claiming that one would have to be wealthy "to have some fantasy this far from reality." (See the transcript here.)
But when Gingrich mockingly laughs at the idea of attrition, he mocks the people of Arizona who have made the attrition policy the law of the land. He also mocks the people of Alabama, South Carolina, and Utah. Each of these states has been sued by the Obama administration over their attrition policies and it seems the people of these states shouldn't expect much of a change if Gingrich were to take Obama's seat in the Oval Office. Arizona governor Jan Brewer's recent heated exchange with President Obama probably wouldn't be much different with a President Gingrich.
Ramos pointed out that Gingrich called Romney "anti-immigrant." Newt didn't back down from that statement, claiming further that Romney "certainly shows no concern for the humanity of people who are already here." The question is why Gingrich seems to show no humanity for those who are "already here" legally – citizens and legal immigrants, millions of whom are unemployed and looking for work and not needing competition from foreigners who are willing to work for substandard wages.
Gingrich then reverted to his tired line of "deporting grandfathers and grandmothers" – as if that demographic group is somehow statistically significant in the nation's total illegal alien population. This misdirection tactic is regularly employed by La Raza, the ACLU, MALDEF, AILA, and other open-border groups, only they also throw in infants.
Gingrich then flashed his amnesty credentials and illustrated that his amnesty plan is really aimed at legalizing all illegal aliens: "I was first involved in this in the 1980s when I worked with Ronald Regan and we passed Simpson-Mazzoli for the purpose of controlling the border, establishing an effective guestworker program, and we had amnesty at that point. So I would just say this is not an issue I took up last Tuesday, okay? We need to have a practical, honest conversation about how to have series of steps that get us to legality for the entire country."
Translation: Legalization for all illegal aliens in the United States, i.e. amnesty.
It is clear that the 1986 amnesty of which Gingrich speaks was not effective for controlling the border or establishing an effective guestworker program. The border remains wide open and guestworkers often don't leave when their temporary status expires. Why would they? Illegal aliens respond to messaging and we've had decades of presidents encouraging illegal aliens to stay with promises of future amnesty.
Do we need another president who fantasizes about legalizing 11 million illegal aliens?